TORRENCE AIMING TO MOVE UP IN POINTS CAPCO Driver Back at Site of 2012 Tour Victory

June 2, 2015 -- Despite consecutive first round losses in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series, one of them by a margin so small as to be undetectable to the naked eye (.0007 of a second), Steve Torrence is encouraged by the fact that two of his four career wins in the 330 mile-an-hour Capco Contractors Top Fuel dragster came in the current bloc of three races-in-three weeks.

The first of those, the 46th annual Toyota Summernationals, begins Friday with a pair of qualifying sessions at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park. Races follow at Epping, N.H., and Bristol, Tenn.

“I’m not going to say that we’re in a ‘must win’ situation,” Torrence said, “but we do need to start making a move in the points to get ourselves a good starting spot (in the Countdown to the Championship beginning in September). We’re in kinda the same deal as last year where we hit a skid in the middle of the season and had some first round losses.

“That usually happens to everyone (over the course of a season) and I’d sure rather have it happen now than later. We know we have a fast hot rod,” emphasized the former Top Alcohol Dragster World Champion (2005), “and the fact that we’re going to a couple of places where we’ve won before is cause to be encouraged but this is a ‘what have you done for me lately’ sport so the fact that we won Englishtown in 2012 means nothing.”

Still, returning to a track where he has celebrated in the winners’ circle as he has at Raceway Park, does provide a measure of confidence at a time when he knows he has to start winning rounds. He also knows that the first step in that process is getting out of that agonizingly stressful first round.

“You look at the cars that qualify and I don’t think you’d pick one you’d want to race in the first round,” said the cancer survivor from Kilgore, Texas. “That’s how competitive it is (in Top Fuel) right now.”

If Torrence stays true to his 2015 form, however, this at least should be a race in which he starts the day with the lane choice option. That’s been sort of an every-other-race phenomenon for the 32-year-old who has yet to duplicate the consistency that he enjoyed in a 2014 season in which he finished a career-best sixth in points despite the fact that he didn’t win a race.

“I don’t know if it’s inconsistency as much as bad timing,” Torrence said. “We haven’t gone to consecutive semifinals like we did last year, but (crew chief Richard) Hogan has the car running good. At the last race (two weeks ago at Topeka, Kan.), we made our quickest run of the year (3.773 seconds) – and still lost in the closest race I’ve ever been in.

“We need to start winning those close ones,” he said. “That’s the key.”